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2021 Remaster.
Coming on the heels of the cut-and-paste sound-collage schizophrenia of The Faust Tapes, Faust IV seems relatively subdued and conventional, though it's still a far cry from what anyone outside the German avant-garde rock scene was doing. The album's disparate threads don't quite jell into something larger (as in the past), but there's still much to recommend it. The nearly 12-minute electro-acoustic opener "Krautrock" is sometimes viewed as a comment on Faust's droning, long-winded contemporaries, albeit one that would lose its point by following the same conventions. There are a couple of oddball pop numbers that capture the group's surreal sense of whimsy: one, "The Sad Skinhead," through its reggae-ish beat, and another, "It's a Bit of a Pain," by interrupting a pastoral acoustic guitar number with the most obnoxious synth noises the band can conjure.
Tracklist
1 Krautrock 11:50
2 The Sad Skinhead 2:45
3 Jennifer 7:13
4 Just A Second (Starts Like That!) 3:38
5 Giggy Smile / Picnic On A Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableux 7:48
6 Läuft...Heisst Das Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald...Läuft ("Psalter" Section) 4:30
7 Läuft...Heisst Das Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald...Läuft 3:43
8 It's A Bit Of A Pain 3:09